Assassin of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “I will show you the girls brought in from the Voltai,” said Ho-Tu.

  I followed him into a large room, barred by a heavy iron door.

  There was a drum fire near the center of the room on the floor. There was a littered look about the room, some pieces of chains about. Two smiths were in the room. There was a guard talking with the smiths. There was also a man in the green of the Caste of Physicians, standing at one side, writing notes on a slip of record paper. He was a large man, smooth-shaven. I saw a branding rack, noted that there were irons in the drum fire. There was also an anvil in the room, resting on a large block of wood. Against the far wall there were thirty kennels, five rows of six each, tiered, with iron runways and iron stairs giving access to them. They reached to the ceiling of the room. Elsewhere in the room there were some slave cages, but they were now empty. Slave rings were mounted on one wall. Hanging from the ceiling, worked from a windlass, dangled a chain, attached to which was a pair of slave bracelets. Against one wall I noted a variety of slave whips, of different weights and leathers.

  The Physician looked up from the paper. “Greetings, Ho-Tu,” said he.

  “Greetings, Flaminius,” said Ho-Tu. “May I introduce Kuurus, of the black caste, but of our employ?”

  Coldly Flaminius nodded his head, and I did the same.

  Then the Physician looked at Ho-Tu. “It is a good lot,” he said.

  “It should be,” said Ho-Tu, “they have been selected with great care.”

  I then understood for the first time that it is not just any girl who is picked up by the Gorean slavers, but that the acquisition of each of these doubtless had been planned with the same diligence and care that is given to a slave raid on Gor itself. They had doubtless been watched, without their knowledge studied and investigated, their habits noted, their common movements and routines recorded, for months prior to the strike of the slaver at a predetermined place and time. I supposed the requirements of the slaves were high. Each of the girls, I suspected, would be vital and much alive. Each of them I knew was beautiful. Each of them I suspected would be intelligent, for Goreans, as the men of Earth commonly do not, celebrate quickness of mind and alertness in a girl. And now they were in the kennels.

  “Let’s look at them,” said Ho-Tu, picking up a small metal hand torch with a wick of twisted, tarred straw from the floor and thrusting it into the drum fire.

  I and the Physician, and the guardsman, followed him up the iron ramp to the second level.

  A blond girl, wearing the steel band locked on her left ankle, crouched at the barred gate, and extended her hands through. “Meine Herren!” she cried. The guard, with a heavy stick he carried, struck the bars viciously before her face and she cried out, jerking back and crouching at the rear of the cage.

  “These next two,” said Flaminius, indicating two cages separated by a cage from the last, “refuse to eat.”

  Ho-Tu lifted the torch to first one cage, and then the other. Both girls were Oriental—my guess would have been Japanese.

  “Feed this one,” said Ho-Tu, pointing to the cage on his left.

  The girl was dragged out and her hands were braceleted behind her back. One of the smiths from below was summoned with a bowl of slave porridge, which he mixed half with water, and stirred well, so that it could be drunk. There are various porridges given to slaves and they differ. The porridges in the iron pens, however, are as ugly and tasteless a gruel, and deliberately so, as might be imagined. As the girl knelt the guardsman pulled back her head and held her nose while the smith, with thumb and forefinger, forced open her jaws and, spilling it a bit on her chin and body, poured a half cup of gruel into her mouth. The girl tried to hold her breath but when it became necessary for her to breathe she must needs swallow the gruel; twice more the smith did this, and then the girl, defeated, swallowed the gruel as he poured it into her mouth, half choking on it.

  “Put her back in the kennel,” said Ho-Tu.

  “Will you not remove the bracelets from her?” I asked.

  “No,” said Ho-Tu, “that way she will not be able to rid herself of the gruel.”

  The second girl had been watching what had gone on. Ho-Tu, with his foot, kicked her gruel pan toward her, which slid under the bars of the gate. She lifted it to her lips and began to eat, trembling.

  The last girl on the second row might have been Greek. She was quite beautiful. She sat with her chin on her knees, looking at us.

  We began to go up to the third level. “They seem very quiet,” I observed.

  “We permit them,” said Flaminius, deigning to offer a bit of explanation, “five Ahn of varied responses, depending on when they recover from the frobicain injection. Mostly this takes the form of hysterical weeping, threats, demands for explanation, screaming and such. They will also be allowed to express their distress for certain periods at stated times in the future.”

  “It is important for them,” added Ho-Tu, “from time to time to be able to cry and scream.”

  “But this is now a silent period, it seems,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Ho-Tu, “until tomorrow morning at the fifth bar.”

  “But what if they are not silent?” I asked.

  “They would be lashed,” said Ho-Tu.

  “It has only been necessary to lift the whip,” said the guard. “They do not speak the language, but they are not fools. They understand.”

  “Each girl in her processing,” said Ho-Tu, “after her fingerprinting, is given five strokes of the lash, that she may feel it and know what it means. After that, to ensure prompt obedience, it is commonly enough to merely move one’s hand toward the leather.”

  “I imagine,” I said, “they can understand very little of what has happened to them.”

  “Of course not,” said Flaminius. “Right now several of them doubtless believe they have gone insane.”

  “Do you lose many girls to madness?” I asked.

  “Surprisingly,” said Flaminius, “no.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “It probably has much to do with the selection of the girls, who tend to be strong, intelligent and imaginative. The imagination is important, that they can comprehend the enormity of what has occurred to them.”

  “How could you convince them they are not insane?” I asked.

  Flaminius laughed. “We explain what has happened to them. They are intelligent, they have imagination, they will have understood the possibility before, though not considering it seriously, and will, in time, accept the reality.”

  “How can you explain to them?” I asked. “They do not speak Gorean?”

  “There is no girl here,” said Flaminius, “for whom there is not at least one member of our staff who can speak their language.”

  I looked at him, bewildered.

  “Surely,” said Flaminius, “you do not think we lack men who are familiar with the world from which these slaves have been brought. We have men of their world in the House and men of our world on their planet.”

  I said nothing.

  “I myself,” said Flaminius, “have visited their world and speak one of its languages.”

  I looked at him.

  “It is called English,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  We had now paused before the two last cages on the right side of the third tier. There was a black girl in each of them, both beautiful. One was sullen and quiet, sitting hunched over in the back of the kennel; the other was curled on the floor, crying softly. We continued on down the walkway until we came to the third cell from the left side of the tier.

  “Why are this girl’s hands braceleted through the bars?” asked Ho-Tu.

  “The guard,” said Flaminius, “liked her. He wanted to look on her face.”

  Ho-Tu, holding the torch close, lifted the girl’s head. She stared at him, her eyes glazed. She was quite beautiful. Italian, I supposed.

  He dropped her head. “Yes,” said Ho-Tu. “She is superb.”

&
nbsp; We then climbed up the stairs to the fourth level.

  When Ho-Tu held his torch to the third cell from the end, above that of the girl below, the Italian, the girl inside cried out and scrambled to the back of the cage, weeping, pressing herself against the cement, scratching at it. I could see the marks of a lash on her back. She was a short girl, dark-haired. I would have guessed French or Belgian.

  “This one,” said Flaminius, “started to go into shock. That can be quite serious. We lashed her that she would feel, that she would come alive under the lash, come to her senses in the pain.”

  I looked into the cage. The girl was terrified, and doubtless in pain, but certainly she was not in shock.

  “Sometimes,” said Flaminius, “shock cannot be so easily prevented. Indeed, sometimes the lash itself drives the girl into shock. Then sedations and drugs are called for. This lot, however, has been excellent.”

  “Have you prepared the initial papers on them?” asked Ho-Tu.

  “Yes,” said Flaminius.

  “How many are white silk?” asked Ho-Tu.

  “Six,” said Flaminius.

  “So many?” asked Ho-Tu.

  “Yes,” said Flaminius.

  “Good,” said Ho-Tu. The Master Keeper turned to me. “The two last girls,” said he, gesturing with his head to the last two cages on the fourth level, “will be of interest to you.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “They have been selected to train with the girl Vella, who keeps your quarters.”

  We went to the last two cages on the tier. Flaminius turned to us. “I can communicate with these two,” he said. Ho-Tu lifted the torch closer to the two cages. “Slaves,” said Flaminius. He spoke in English.

  The two girls lifted their eyes to him startled. “You speak English,” said one of them, slowly, staring at him, dumbfounded. The other scrambled to the bars, thrusting her hands through. “Help us!” she cried. “Help us!” Then the first girl, too, knelt at the bars, putting her hands through. “Please!” she wept. “Please! Please!”

  Flaminius stood back, expressionlessly accepting their supplications.

  Then they knelt there, holding the bars, their faces stained with tears.

  “Please,” whispered the one on the left, “Please.”

  “You are slaves,” said Flaminius, again in English.

  They shook their heads. Both, I noted, were, like Elizabeth, dark-haired. I suspected they had been chosen to train with her, at least in part, in order that they might form a matched set. The girl on the left had her hair cut rather short; the slavers would, in all probability, not permit her to continue to wear her hair in that fashion; her face was delicate, fragile, rather thin and intellectual; her body was thin; I expected her new masters would put some weight on her; her eyes were gray; the thin face was marked with several blemishes; the other girl was perhaps an inch or so shorter, though it was difficult to tell; she was more full-bodied than the first girl but not excessively so; she had fair, exciting shoulders, a good belly and wide, sweet, well-turned hips; her hair had been cut at the shoulders; her eyes, like Elizabeth’s, were brown; the second girl, I supposed, if sold separately, might bring a somewhat higher price than the first. I found both extremely attractive, however.

  Flaminius turned to Ho-Tu and the rest of us. “I have just told them,” he said, in Gorean, “that they are slaves.”

  The girl on the left, the thinner one with the blemishes, spoke. “I am not a slave,” she said.

  Flaminius turned to us again. “She has just denied that she is a slave,” he told us.

  The guard with us laughed.

  Tears sprang into the girl’s eyes. “Please!” she said.

  “You are mad!” said the second girl. “All of you are mad!”

  “What is your name?” asked Flaminius of the first girl.

  “Virginia,” said the first girl, “Virginia Kent.”

  “Where are we!” demanded the second girl. “I demand that you release us! I demand an explanation! Get us out of here immediately! Hurry! Hurry, I tell you!”

  Flaminius paid the second girl no attention. “Eat your gruel, Virginia,” said he, soothingly, to the first girl.

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked the first girl.

  “Eat,” said Flaminius, kindly.

  “Let us out!” cried the second girl, shaking the bars. “Let us out!”

  Virginia Kent picked up the gruel pan and put it to her lips, taking some of the stuff.

  “Let us out!” cried the second girl.

  “Now drink,” said Flaminius.

  Virginia lifted the pan of water, and took a sip. The pan was battered, tin, rusted.

  “Let us out!” cried the second girl yet again.

  “What is your name?” asked Flaminius of the second girl, very gently.

  “You are mad!” cried the girl. “Let us out!” She shook the bars.

  “What is your name?” repeated Flaminius.

  “Phyllis Robertson,” said the girl angrily.

  “Eat your gruel, Phyllis,” said Flaminius. “It will make you feel better.”

  “Let me out!” she cried.

  Flaminius gestured to the guard and he, with his club, suddenly struck the bars in front of Phyllis Robertson’s face and she screamed and darted back in the cage, where she crouched away from the bars, tears in her eyes.

  “Eat your gruel,” said Flaminius.

  “No,” she said. “No!”

  “Does Phyllis remember the lash?” asked Flaminius.

  The girl’s eyes widened with fear. “Yes,” she said.

  “Then say so,” said Flaminius.

  I whispered in Gorean to Ho-Tu, as though I could not understand what was transpiring. “What is he doing with them?”

  Ho-Tu shrugged. “He is teaching them they are slaves,” he said.

  “I remember the lash,” said Phyllis.

  “Phyllis remembers the lash,” corrected Flaminius.

  “I am not a child!” she cried.

  “You are a slave,” said Flaminius.

  “No,” she said. “No!”

  “I see,” said Flaminius, sadly, “it will be necessary to beat you.”

  “Phyllis remembers the lash,” said the girl numbly.

  “Excellent,” said Flaminius. “Phyllis will be good. Phyllis will eat her gruel. Phyllis will drink her water.”

  She looked at him with hatred.

  His eyes met hers and they conquered. She dropped her head, turning it to one side. “Phyllis will be good,” she said. “Phyllis will eat her gruel. Phyllis will drink her water.”

  “Excellent,” commended Flaminius.

  We watched as the girl lifted first the gruel pan and then the water pan to her lips, tasting the gruel, taking a swallow of the water.

  She looked at us with tears in her eyes.

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked the first girl.

  “As you probably have suspected, noting the difference in gravitational field,” said Flaminius, “this is not Earth.” He regarded them evenly. “This is the Counter-Earth,” he said. “This is the planet Gor.”

  “There is no such place!” cried Phyllis.

  Flaminius smiled. “You have heard of it?” he asked.

  “It is only in books!” cried Phyllis. “It is an invention!”

  “This is Gor,” said Flaminius.

  Virginia gasped, drawing back.

  “You have heard, as many others,” he asked, “of the Counter-Earth?”

  “It is only in stories,” she said.

  Flaminius laughed.

  “I read of Gor,” said Virginia. “It seemed to me very real.”

  Flaminius smiled. “In the books of Tarl Cabot you have read of this world.”

  “They are only stories,” said Phyllis numbly.

  “There will be no more such stories,” said Flaminius.

  Virginia looked at him, her eyes wide.

  “Tarl Cabot,” said h
e, “was slain in Ko-ro-ba.” Flaminius indicated me. “This is Kuurus, who for gold seeks his killer.”

  “He wears black,” said Virginia.

  “Of course,” said Flaminius.

  “You’re all mad!” said Phyllis.

  “He is of the Caste of Assassins,” said Flaminius.

  Phyllis screamed and held her head in her hands.

  “This is Gor,” said Virginia. “Gor.”

  “Why have we been brought here?” asked Phyllis.

  “Strong men,” said Flaminius, “have always, even in the course of your own planet’s history, taken the females of weaker men for their slaves.”

  “We are not slaves,” said Virginia numbly.

  “You are the females of weaker men,” said Flaminius, “the men of Earth.” He looked at her intently. “We are the stronger,” he said. “We have power. We have ships which can traverse space to Earth. We will conquer Earth. It belongs to us. When we wish we bring Earthlings to Gor as our slaves, as was done with you. Earth is a slave world. You are natural slaves. It is important for you to understand that you are natural slaves, that you are inferior, that it is natural and right that you should be the slaves of the men of Gor.”

  “We are not slaves,” said Phyllis.

  “Virginia,” said Flaminius. “Is what I say not true? Is it not true that the women of weaker, conquered men, if permitted to live, have been kept only as the slaves of the conquerors, permitted to live only that they may serve the pleasures of victorious masters?”

  “I teach classics and ancient history,” said Virginia, scarcely whispering. “It is true that in much of the history of the Earth the sort of thing you say was done.”

  “Does it not seem natural?” asked Flaminius.